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<title>if you publish it, it must be true, right?</title>
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<center><p><h1>all those books...</h1></center><p>
there's a scattering of books everywhere throughout the clearing.
it's clear that dan reads more than would make pat robertson happy.
then again, who cares?</p>

recently read books and topics:
<ul>
<li>queer theory:  
<ul>
<li>
i just finished <cite>Vice Versa</cite> by Marjorie
Garber, which was a very interesting book about bisexuality and how it's
ignored yet actually ubiquitous.  i wish we could get over our fixation
with freud, though.  
<li>
i'm almost done with <cite>The Celluloid Closet</cite> by Vito Russo.
basically, his theme is that it's impossible to find people who are
incidentally gay or lesbian (let alone bisexual) in movies from the
beginning of the medium to 1987.  not that that has changed much in the
time since then.  this book was made into a movie (well, sort of--russo died of
aids in 1990 and the movie is quite different from the book.)  it's very
interesting to consider just how absurd the gay characters in movies over
the last 50 years have been--a great example might be the sal mineo
character in <cite>Rebel without a Cause</cite> or the cowardly lion.  also
hideous is just how duplicitous hollywood has been in changing themes of
major literary works and/or lying about the history of well-known gay
people (e.g. beethoven was bisexual, <cite>immortal beloved</cite> or not).
<li>
Jonathan Ned Katz' <cite>The Invention of Heterosexuality</cite> is a
magnificent assault on the notion that heterosexuality is "normal,"
"eternal" or "universal."  actually, the term is only 100 years old, and
actually, the attitudes surrounding it (which basically is the notion that
sexuality and pleasure can be separated from reproduction) is also roughly
from that time period.  again, though, too much freud.
<li>
Gilbert Herdt's <cite>Youth of Horizons</cite> is a nice book about gay
kids in chicago.  he starts with a really nice representation of the
classic social constructivist view of gay people, which i really
appreciated.  he's a little overly anthropological.  i found this frustrating, but
not too much, since he's less polemic than he otherwise might be.  he also
wrote a large number of books in the early 80s about ritualized
homosexuality in areas around new guinea, such as the sambians who believe
that the only way they can become masculine is to ingest semen.  (no, i'm
not making that up.)
<li>
<cite>joining the tribe</cite> is a nice book about gay kids all over the
country.  there's quite a difference in the statistical, academic
presentation of an anthropologist like herdt in the last book than
in the presentation of a journalist like the woman who wrote this one.
she's entirely interested in anecdotes, while he is almost not at all.
<li>
<cite>gay is not good</cite> is a beautifully offensive tract from the
pre-aids days.  interesting of course is the fact that this pap still gets
written, published (despite threats from the "militant homosexual" wing
which its author suggests runs all of publishing) (if that were the case,
why is mass media so fucking biased?)  anyhow, we get such marvels as...
<ul>
<li>an analysis of the "advantages to homosexuality," such as our extra
free time, increased leisure cash, and lack of need to be members of the
PTA.  (and we don't have to take care of our loved ones because we're all
unloving sex-crazed monsters...good thing this book DID come out before
aids...) 
<li>a gorgeous discussion of greek society along the lines of "if the
greeks were the best that homosexuals could do and <em>they</em> didn't
know about things like the germ theory of disease, circulation of the blood
or sub-atomic particle physics, they weren't much, now were they?" coupled
with a really nasty description of socrates as "the most important gay man
of all time" who was still a woman-hating, pederast, etc. and a salacious
reference to what we'd find in the lives of "lesser homosexuals" like
tchaikowsky, da vinci or wilde.  hey, you know, i hear chairman mao was
straight!  lenin too!  gods-damned heterosexuals.
<li>a medical description which seems to be written by a 2-yr-old about why
heterosexual sex is "better" than gay sex.  this guy needs a better sex
life (so do i, but let's not go there).
</ul>
<li>
i reread pat califia's <cite>public sex: the culture of radical sex</cite>
recently.  she basically is writing about a whole bunch of marginalized,
even by queers, sexual behaviours: sex with "minors" (how many of you
waited 'til you were 18?), why anti-porn "feminists" are silly (a comment
from john katz on this is that the image of women as happy housewives in
commercials probably does far more harm to women than does pornography...),
and other topics.  her porn is also highly rated by yours truly. 
<li>
i'm also enjoying reading some essays by gore vidal about sex.  as the
poster child for the "there's no such thing as homosexuals, just homosexual
sex" movement, i have some disagreements with him.  but he writes so well!
</ul>
<li>
computer science:
<ul>
<li>
i'm reading alon & spencer's <cite>the probabilistic method</cite> which
basically tries to prove that combinatorial objects exist by creating a
probablistic space which includes all objects of a certain type and showing
that an object with the desired properties will be randomly selected with
non-zero probability.  thus, objects of the desired type exist.  cute, but
lacking much motivation ("that's nice, but why do i care that graphs with
this property exist after all?  and can i <em>find</em> them?)
<li>
ketan mulmuley's <cite>computational geometry through randomized
algorithms</cite> is a lovely book about this kind of computer science.
i'm really really enjoying it, when i get to reading it.
<li>
preparata and shamos' <cite>computational geometry</cite> is the more
classic book on the topic.  it's drier, more out of date, and precedes the
whole discussion of how randomization can make something like geometry,
which is ultimately largely about "sorting" and "searching" much faster.
<li>
i'm also reading random books like a conference proceedings volume about
a-life, some soda proceedings, and other books.  
</ul>
<li>
fiction: <br>
lately i've been reading mostly gay-themed fiction.  it's not that i'm avoiding heterosexual fiction, but i can't seem to accidentally 
get straight fiction off the
2-week shelf at olin library (the grad library here at cornell).  not that
i really mind, but...<br>
i did seek out some of the following, however.  and some of it's
straight-themed anyhow:
<ul>
<li>
manuel puig's <cite>kiss of the spider woman</cite> was a really neat read.
my friend nohemy (who's moving to stanford in a month) and i saw the play
at the kitchen theater in downtown ithaca (which seems not to be on the
web...) and i read the book in translation after that.  one difference
between the book and the play (i've not seen the movie) is that in the
play, valentin and molina only have sex once, which (to my way of thinking)
minimizes the significance of their emotional attachment.  in the book,
they do so over a several day period.  it may sound small, but it's
significant.  anyhow, a very interesting read.
<li>
gore vidal's <cite>the city and the pillar</cite> was really upsetting.
it's the first book to ever deal with gay people at all nicely, and even it
is kind of upsetting.  i do recommend it as a really melodramatic, intense,
quick read, however.
<li>
slightly less appaling is andrew holleran's <cite>dancer from the
dance</cite>.  though it still ends with the faggot dying (why is that???),
it's a tragic yet beautiful chronicle of the life of a gay man as he moves
from one-who-has-not-joined-the-tribe to its most stereotypical member.
ack.  why do i know these people still, even though the book is mid-70s?
<li>
daniel vilmure's <cite>toby's lie</cite> made me cry.  that alone is pretty
impressive.  all toby wants to do is dance with his boyfriend at the prom
and nothing seems willing to let him do it.  vilmure also wrote <cite>life
in the land of the living</cite>, which is about white trash kids in the
south.  nice, nice voice.
<li>
scott heim wrote <cite>mysterious skin</cite> from a whole bunch of
different voices, which tell us about one boy's obsession with ufo's and
how he realizes that he was abused as a kid, while telling a really pretty
intergenerational love story at the same time.  he also just emailed me to
thank me for mentioning him on this page...that's kinda neat in its own
right, you know?  it was also odd, now that i think about it, realizing
just how much it seems different reading books about kids that were written
in, say, the early 20th century versus today.  is it because i'm more like
the current ones, because i <em>seek</em> ones who are more like me, or
because the writing is more honest?  who knows...
<li>
lars eighner's <cite>pawn to queen four</cite> is pat robertson's worst
nightmare, a funny story about the drag queens who <em>really</em> run the
planet.
<li>
i'm enjoying a book of lesbian vampire stories called <cite>daughters of
darkness</cite> quite a lot right now.
<li>
i read a cute book about love and murder in a british department store
recently, called <cite>everything and more</cite>--that's worth a read.
<li>
i'm also re-reading <cite>portnoy's complaint</cite>(philip roth) and some
shitty norman mailer crap.  why do people read this shit?
</ul>
<li>
other topics: <br>
i've also been reading some biography, anthropology, computer science
papers, and the occasional truly bad trash novel.  i read too much.
</ul>

here's what i generally <em>like</em> to read about...:
<ul>
<li>consciousness, and what modern science can tell us about how the
mind works.  good books on this topic are very hard to come by, but
the recent collection called <i>android epistemology</i>, recently
published by the <a href = "//www-mitpress.mit.edu">mit press</a>, is
a good start.  be wary of anything that was written by someone who
actually has no scientific background.  there was a bitchy editorial
in the new york times just today about how a well-respected scientist
managed to confuse some sociologists of science with complete crap
about quantum mechanics and its impacts on literary theory.  but this
stuff is all too common.  check out <i>higher superstition: the
academic left and its quarrels with science</i>(jhu press, 1994) for
more details on this topic.  ick.  

<li>philosophy of theoretical computer science.  this extends to
discussions of artificial intelligence (which is also in the previous
category), but it also involves whether concepts like "turing machine"
or the kleene heirarchy have any real philosophical importance.
almost all that i've read on this topic is bunk too.

<li>witchcraft.  i've been practicing <a href = "witchcraft.html">
witchcraft</a> for a few years, but most books on this topic are also
crap.  a couple exceptions are the books by starhawk, margot adler's
<i>drawing down the moon</i>, and the books by the farrars.  email me
if you'd like more information about this topic.

<li>gay and lesbian politics.  again, a topic which has too many bad
writings.  i don't agree with most of what they say, but you could
check out the writings of bruce bawer, or the writings of jeffrey
weeks.  unfortunately, however, this topic seems to lack a competent
"middle ground."  or, perhaps, i keep believing that there should be
one when there needn't be.  who knows.

<li>gay and lesbian history.  there <i>are</i> good books on this.
brian boswell's books, <i>same-sex unions in premodern europe</i> and
<i>christianity, social tolerance and homosexuality</i> are fantastic
books about the medieval history of gay people.  in a more modern
sense, the auto-biographical books of paul monette, especially
<i>becoming a man</i> are fantastic.  you could always read david
halperin, if you wanted.  

<li>obscure religions.  last semester i read about <a href =
"http://www.scientology.org">scientology</a> and this summer i seem to
be starting off on a journey of (discovery?) of <a href =
"http://www.lds.org">mormonism</a>.  ack.  what scary people...

<li>contemporary fiction.  cornell's library includes a 2-week loan
group of books which are often very interesting and current, and the
undergrad library has a 6-month loan period on everything, including
new books.  very nice.

<li>medieval history.  

<li>anti-technological rantings by folks like kirkpatrick sale who
really should stop publishing in phototype if they want to
authentically make their message.

<li>anthropology of modern primitive societies.

<li>erotica.  a really nice site is the one that's run by <a href =
"http://www.circlet.com/circlet/home.html">circlet press</a> which was
partially founded by a friend of mine.  you might also check out the
site run by <a href = "http://www.goodvibes.com">good vibrations</a>.

<li>computer science.  (it is what i study...)

<li>operations research.  (it's what i currently study...)

<li>math.  (it's what i really study...)

<hr>
<center>"we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of
dreams."--aphex twin</center>
<hr>


<address>dan brown (snowman@cs.cornell.edu).<br> last updated 22 jul 96</address>
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